Sustainable Development Working Group
The Director has appointed a referent to coordinate the reflection and implementation of a set of actions aimed at reducing the school's ecological footprint. Around him, a permanent working group - made up of ten or so volunteers representing all the departments of the establishment - met every month to discuss, propose and evaluate actions as they were taken and to draw up a programme. This working group initially focused its efforts on waste. The establishment evacuates an average of three skips per week, i.e. 90 m³ per week. The objective was to set up an initial sorting of the various materials into paper and cardboard on the one hand and the rest of the waste on the other. Eventually, a more thorough sorting will be put in place, identifying recoverable materials (plastics, wood, glass etc.).
The recycling library
Another initiative: the recuperation library, a place run by a student association that allows everyone to store materials on the condition that others are removed. The initial results show that there has been an effort to recover materials and that efforts to reuse them should be continued. The School has joined La Réserve des Arts, a non-profit association that collects and recycles waste from the cultural sector. Once in their warehouse, the materials are recovered, cleaned, de-identified, and find a second life with the 10,000 members, 50% of whom are students. Membership of the LRDA allows students, teachers and staff of the Beaux-Arts de Paris to become members for a symbolic €1 and thus access to the purchase of their materials at solidarity prices. At the same time, the Beaux-Arts de Paris has given itself the means to have a sustainable scenography, following reflections that have shown the important volume of waste generated by the exhibitions.
La Glaneuse (the recuperation library of the Beaux-Arts de Paris)
More information:
lareservedesarts.org
Download the membership form
Replacing polymers
Finally, the technical base dedicated to composite materials has launched an innovative research programme on polymer replacement. Based on a combination of artistic practices in the School's workshops and advanced research in chemistry and engineering, this programme aims to create new, biosourced, recyclable materials with a small ecological footprint for use in artistic practice and even for industrial developments. In partnership with researchers from the Ecole des Mines.
Les étudiants de la récupérathèque - La Glaneuse
Photo : LA RÉSERVE DES ARTS (LRDA)
